This is Kathleen March. Welcome to WERU’s US El Salvador Report. This
week we discuss tomorrow’s presidential elections and US groups that
have voiced strong opinions on the matter – one for a free and fair
process and one against the FMLN. This report is produced by Spanish
496 Students at the University of Maine in collaboration with Radio
Sumpul in El Salvador and US – El Salvador Sister Cities.

Segment 1: Confronting the Iraqi Refugee Crisis conference at Colby College. A report produced by Carolyn Coe and John Greenman. How are students at Colby College organizing to address the Iraqi refugee crisis? Why are Iraqis seeking resettlement in a third country like the U.S.? What is the experience for those who have resettled and for the organizations working to support new immigrants? Speaker: Jason Opal, Professor at Colby. FMI: www.refugeesinternational.org , www.thelistproject.org , www.preventinghate.org , www.ccmaine.org , www.afsc.org

Segment 2: The 2 major political parties in El Salvador are comprised of people who fought on opposite sides in the civil war there in the 1980s. The right-wing ARENA party, of which the current president is a member, is the party of the repressive government and death squads that were financially supported by the US. As a term of the Peace Accords, those who committed atrocities were never tried or punished, and many of them continue to be in power. The left-leaning FMLN party represents the popular people’s movement who rose up against the repressive right wing regime. In the recent municipal elections the FMLN were largely victorious, and the FMLN presidential candidate is ahead in the polls for that election, to be held next month. As we’ve reported previously, there are widespread reports from El Salvador that the communities that support the FMLN are being targeted for harassment—- and on-going criminalization of dissent— by the current right wing regime. This has escalated in recent days in the community of Cinquera. Meredith DeFrancesco, Jessie Dyer-Stewart and Amy Browne spoke by phone yesterday with Francisco Amilcar Lobo, a teacher from Cinquera who described what has been happening. FMI: www.elsalvadorsolidarity.org

Also, a 4 part special produced by Amy Browne in 2007 features Don Pablo Alvarenga, the town historian, telling about the oppression and atrocities in the years leading up to, and during the war. Here are links to those programs in our archives:

We talk by phone with Francisco Martinez and Michelle Anderson in El Salvador for breaking news from Suchito where the right-wing ARENA party government military showed up in town this week, apparently to intimidate the people in the area where the left FMLN party is far ahead in the polls leading up to elections in January and March.

Francisco Martinez is with the PROGRESO “Directiva Regional” or regional coordinating board in the Suchitoto region. PROGRESO is the regional branch of CRIPDES. CRIPDES started under the name Christian Committee for the Displaced of El Salvador. After the end of the Salvadoran Civil War, the CRIPDES communities changed the name to The Association of Rural Communities for the Development of El Salvador, the Spanish acronym for which is CRIPDES

Michelle Anderson is the Co-Coordinator for the U.S.-El Salvador Sister Cities network, linking 16 cities across the U.S. as a movement in solidarity with the Salvadoran organized communities. In addition to participating in this interview, she provides translation as well.

The stage is set in El Salvador for the FMLN party to defeat the right wing ARENA party in the upcoming elections. The groups that eventually became the FMLN and ARENA parties, fought on opposite sides in the war in El Salvador in the 1980s. The right had ties to the small number of wealthy families that had long controlled the country, and included paramilitaries who committed widespread massacres and other crimes against humanity, and assassinated Archbishop Romero. They received funding from the U.S. government, which labeled the uprising of the poor rural people against that right wing regime “communism”.
Since the peace accords that ended the war nearly 17 years ago, former paramilitaries—who have gone unpunished—-have been active in the right-wing ARENA party, and many of those involved in the people’s uprising are associated with FMLN.
The ARENA party has been in office and has had a close relationship with the Bush regime. Now that polls indicate that the FMLN will likely win in next year’s elections, many in El Salvador believe that the U.S. will go to great lengths to prevent that from happening.
We spoke by phone yesterday to a community organizer in El Salvador, and a member of the Sister Cities organization that helps coordinate WERU’s relationship with our sister station Radio Sumpul, as well as the sistering relationships between Maine Organic Farmers and Gardener’s Assoc and the rural communities of El Salvador, and PICA and Bangor’s Sister City relationship with Carasque.

Guests: Bernardo Belloso is a National Directive Council Member of the Association of Rural Communities for the Development of El Salvador,CRIPDES*.* CRIPDES is the largest rural grassroots movement in El Salvador which coordinates the organizing, education and mobilization of over 300 rural communities spread through seven provinces of El Salvador
Michelle Anderson is the Co-Coordinator for the U.S.-El Salvador Sister Cities network, linking 16 cities across the U.S. as a movement in solidarity with the Salvadoran organized communities. In this interview Michelle is translating Bernado’s comments to English